Kick-off: Leadership and Human Development Working Group

The Post-Industrial Forum’s first working group opened with an overview of the learning cycle the groups follow (connect, learn, apply, share) and the 2026 learning agenda: leading under rapid change and uncertainty, securing alignment for transformational change, building individual capacity for rapid adaptation and decision-making, and using AI to accelerate leadership and human development. The aim was to move beyond learning from outside speakers toward applying ideas in members’ own organizations and sharing the results.

Participants then used a virtual whiteboard to propose more than 30 topics, each marked as something they wanted to learn or could contribute, and voted on their priorities. Discussion surfaced a recurring theme: the readiness gap between executives eager to adopt AI and the faculty, managers, and frontline workers expected to make it work. The group closed by agreeing on a monthly cadence for future sessions.